The Dagger in Vichy (preorder)

(preorder—to be published in Fall)

Dust jacket illustration by Andrew Davis.

Alastair Reynolds is back with an eerie mix of fantasy and science fiction, in a riveting novella that combines golden age adventure with the sophisticated sensibilities of Station Eleven.

In a deep medieval future, a band of players travels across France to perform the same old tales in the same old towns. When passing soldiers entrust them with a mysterious box that they say must be delivered to the Imperator, old playwright Master Guillaume and young escaped thief Rufus puzzle at what the box might contain.

When Rufus overhears strange conversations between his Master Guillaume and the thing in the box, he must choose between his loyalty to the man who saved him from the noose and fear of the ancient intelligence working in their midst.

Secrets spill out over the road to Avignon, and none in the troupe are safe. Not Blind Benedict, who once saw the faceless Empty Knight patrolling the deathless Wald that creeps ever closer to the cities, and not Master Bernard whose sensible plans are not equal to the eldritch thing the company now carries with them. All the world’s a stage, and so was every world that came before.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies

From Locus:

“Reynolds does an excellent job with a story that could almost be set in early modern France, slip­ping in references that upend that view. The troupe travel by horse-drawn wagon; there seems to be no long-range communication; Guillaume writes his plays by hand, on paper. But Bernard’s dagger has a nugget of depleted uranium in the hilt, armies use energy-artillery, and some rich cities have healing coffins for medical emergencies. It’s eventually revealed that the story is set many centuries after our own time, after the Twilight Centuries, and there are still remnants of pre-Twilight equip­ment for those who know how to use them. It’s not quite a postapocalyptic world – or rather, it’s many centuries on from disaster, such that folks are now simply living in the world as it is. While society has regressed in terms of the technology people can access, they are also simply getting on with life. Much as the people of early modern France did. It is, I think, a declaration of human resilience (or bloody-mindedness) in the face of catastrophe (much like life in Chasm City after the Melding Plague, in some of Reynolds’ Revelation Space stories).”

Note: The cover is not final.